E61 
.H52 

Copy 2 



V ^To 





V 



;^C^: **** %y 





«feV 





3^. 




... V^'\^ %*™* a0 9 V'* 





^ . o " • . 












fc*. J> 




• A - ■ 












±<y *r^L>+ • •••• V v v 



^ 9 




0* ^b, A 





0 ^ ^ 






V'^f^A'' ^"•-^•.'0^ T V^.."A 





^o 1 





WHO ARE THE AMERICAN INDIANS? 



HENRY WETHERBEE HENSHAW. 

it 



[Reprint from The American Anthropologist. July. 1889.] 



WASHINGTON : 
JUDD & DETWEILER, PRINTERS. 
1889. 



[From the American Anthropologist for July, 1889.] 



WHO ARE THE AMERICAN INDIANS?* 

BY HENRY WETHERBEE HENSHAW. 

When Columbus discovered America he discovered not only a new 
continent but a new people — the American Indians. From one end 
to the other of its broad expanse the continent was occupied by In- 
dian tribes that had held the land from time immemorial — so far at 
least as their own traditions aver — knowing nothing of any country 
but their own. The commonly presented picture of the Indians as 
they appeared at the time of the discovery is that of a horde of wan- 
dering savages, half or wholly naked, living on roots and herbs, or 
existing by the capture of wild animals scarcely more savage than 
themselves, and the chief objects of whose existence was to enslave, 
to torture, and to kill each other. Those who hold such opinions 
have ever taken a hopeless view of the Indian's present and a still 
more hopeless view of his future. Such a picture conveys a totally 
false impression of the Indian and of the state of culture to which 
he had attained at the era of the discovery. Though still living in 
savagery, he was in the upper confines of that estate and was fast 
pressing upon the second stage of progress, that of barbarism — that 
is to say, he had progressed far beyond and above the lowest states 
in which man is known to live, to say nothing of the still lower con- 
ditions from which he must have emerged, and had traveled many 
steps along the long and difficult road to civilization. 

Already he had become skillful in the practice of many arts. 
Though the skins of beasts furnished a large part of his clothing, he 

*A lecture delivered in the National Museum, Washington, D. C, March 
30, 1889, in the "Saturday Course," under the auspices of the Anthropological, 
Biological, Chemical, National Geographic, and Philosophical Societies. 

25 (193) 



194 



THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST. 



[Vol. II. 



had possessed himself of the weaver's art, and from the hair of many 
animals, from the down of birds, and from the fibers of many plants 
he knew how to spin, to weave, and to dye fabrics. 

Basket-making he had carried to so high a degree of perfection 
that little further improvement was possible. 

The potter's art also was his, and though his methods were crude 
and laborious the results achieved, both as regards grace of form and 
ornamentation, may well excite admiration at the present day. 

Copper had been discovered and was mined and roughly beaten 
into shape to serve for ornament and, to some slight extent, for me- 
chanical use. In Mexico and Peru gold, silver, and copper were 
worked, and many authors contend that the method of making 
bronze, an invention fraught with tremendous possibilities, had 
there been discovered. 

In much of South and Central America, Mexico, and the eastern 
parts of the United States so important an advance had been made 
in agriculture that it furnished a very large part of the food supply, 
and it should not be forgotten that the chief product of the Indian's 
tillage, maize or Indian corn, which to-day furnishes a large part 
of the world's food, was the gift of the Indian to civilization. A 
scarcely less important contribution to mankind is the potato, the 
cultivation of which also originated with the Indians. A third im- 
portant agricultural product, though less beneficial, is tobacco, the 
use and cultivation of which had been discovered centuries before 
the advent of the European. 

Architecture may seem like a large word to apply to the dwellings 
of the Indians. Nevertheless many of their houses were more sub- 
stantial and comfortable than is generally supposed, while in the 
Northwest many tribes reared dwellings of hewn planks, sometimes 
as large as 210 feet long by 30 feet wide, which were capable of 
accommodating several hundred individuals. More pretentious and 
durable were the communal houses of mud and stone reared by the 
pueblo people of Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico, while further 
south, in Central and South America, were edifices of hewn stone, 
which from their dimensions, the size of some of the blocks con- 
tained in them, and the extent and ornate character of the orna- 
mentation, justly excite the wonder and admiration of the traveler 
and archaeologist. 

The advantages of a beast of burden had been perceived, and 
though the human back furnished by far the greater part of the 



July 1889.] WHO ARE THE AMERICAN INDIANS? 



195 



transportation, yet in North America the dog had been trained into 
an effective ally, and in the Andes the llama performed a similar 
office. Insignificant as was the use of the dog as a carrier, its em- 
ployment cannot well be overestimated as a step in progress when it is 
remembered that the plain's tribes that most employed it lived in the 
midst of the buffalo, an animal which must have become of prime 
domestic importance in the never-to-be-enacted future of the Indian. 

The need of some method of recording events and communi- 
cating ideas had been felt and had given rise, even among the ruder 
tribes, to picture-writing, which in Mexico and Central America had 
been so far developed into ideographs, popularly called hieroglyphics, 
as to hint strongly at the next stage, the invention of a true phonetic 
alphabet ; nay more, the Mexicans and Mayas are believed to have 
reached a stage of true phonetic writing, where characters were made 
to represent not things, as true ideographic writing, but the names of 
things and even of abstract ideas ; and this is a stage which may be 
said to be on the very threshold of one of the proudest achievements 
of civilization, that of a phonetic alphabet. 

Instead of living in an unorganized state, where each man was a 
law unto himself in all things, the Indians lived under organized 
forms of government, rude enough indeed when compared with the 
highly organized system of civilized nations, but marking an essen- 
tial advance on the conditions attained by savage peoples in other 
parts of the world. The chieftaincy was transmitted by well-under- 
stood laws or, as in some tribes, was more purely elective. Their 
social system was very ingenious and complex, and, being based 
largely upon kinship ties, was singularly well fitted for the state to 
which they had attained, of which indeed it was simply an expression 
and outgrowth. In many sections a considerable advance had been 
made in political confederation, and neighboring tribes combined for 
defense and to wage war against a common enemy. They had in'_ 
vented many and singularly efficient laws to repress and punish 
lawlessness against the individual and the social body, and as a 
consequence they enjoyed almost entire immunity from theft and 
many other crimes. 

The development of religious ideas among our Indians is a curious 
and instructive study. Though the Great Spirit and the Happy 
Hunting Ground which missionaries and theologians thought they 
had discovered among them are now known to have had no exist- 
ence, the Indians had by no means reached the state of culture in 



196 



THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST. 



[Vol. II. 



which they were found without developing religions. Their gods or 
fetishes were innumerable, their priests endowed with immense in- 
fluence, and their ceremonies of devotion and propitiation were as 
devout as they were elaborate. The precision of the beliefs of many 
tribes and the elaborateness of their rituals are simply astonishing. 
Thus their advance in the domain of religious thought equalled, if 
it did not surpass, their progress in some other directions. 

If by medicine we mean the rational treatment of disease, the 
Indian can be said to have learned only the rudiments of the heal- 
ing art. Medicine, in so far as it was a distinct profession, was 
almost wholly in the hands of the Medicine Man or Shaman, who 
filled the two-fold office of priest and doctor. Neither the theory 
nor the practice of the Shaman had in it anything that was rational 
and very little that was efficacious, except through the influence exer- 
cised over the mind of the patient, in other words, except so far 
as the Shaman was a faith-curer. Whatever that is marvelous in 
the modern cases of faith cure can be more than matched out of the 
practice and experience of the Shaman, who learned his trade long 
before the European came to these shores. He who would see the 
Indian Shaman need not seek the wilds of the Far West. He may 
find his counterpart on Pennsylvania avenue. The whole medical 
practice of the Indian Shaman was based upon the idea that all 
disease was the effect of evil disease spirits that had obtained lodg- 
ment in the body, or that it was caused by witchcraft, and so long as 
practice was directed to the dislodgment of these spirits no rational 
treatment was possible. I am aware that the above idea of Indian 
medicine is contrary to popular belief, which to some extent at least 
is in harmony with the claims of alleged Indian doctors of white 
extraction who claim to have derived their skill and their herbs 
directly from the hands of Indian experts. Recent and carefully 
conducted investigations on this subject, however, fully substantiate 
the above statements. Though roots and herbs were employed in 
the treatment of nearly all diseases, they were chiefly used as adjuncts 
to the charms and sorceries of the medicine man. Often they were 
not given to the patient at all, but were taken by the medicine man 
to heighten his power over the disease spirits. Often they were 
applied by being rubbed on the body of the patient or by being 
blown in the shape of smoke on the afflicted part. 

Among the Indians was found flourishing to a remarkable degree 
the so-called doctrine of seals or signatures. A few examples of 



July 1889.] WHO ARE THE AMERICAN INDIANS? 



107 



the doctrine derived from the eastern Cheroki by Mr. James Mooney 
may prove of interest. Doubtless you are all familiar with the cone 
flower. The Cheroki call it deer eye, and from its fancied resem- 
blance to the strong-sighted eye of the deer and its connection by 
name, for the Indian believes that there is a potent connection be- 
tween the name of a thing and the thing itself, it is used as a wash 
for ailing eyes. 

The common purslane {Portulaca oleracca) is used as a vermi- 
fuge, because the red stalk looks like a worm. 

An infusion of the roots of the hoary pea (Tefthrosia virginiana), 
called devil's shoe-strings in the South because of their toughness, is 
used by the Cheroki ball-players as a wash to strengthen their bodies, 
and by the women as a hair wash to strengthen it and keep it from 
falling. 

Who of you has ever walked in our woods without getting on his 
clothing the common beggar's lice {Desmodiuni) ? How tenaciously 
they stick you all know; so do the Cheroki, and because the burrs 
stick fast they use a tea made of them to strengthen the memory. 
The Cheroki at least can dispense with the service of a Loisette. 

You whose ambition it is to be good singers have only to drink a 
tea of crickets, according to the Cheroki, for does not the cricket 
possess a fine voice and doth he not sing merrily? 

The tendency of the human mind to speculate and to draw in- 
ferences, a tendency common alike to the savage and the civilized 
man, cannot be held in check forever, however strong the bonds; 
and just as knowledge and science escaped from priestly thrall within 
the history of civilized times, so a certain small amount of knowledge 
of the therapeutical use of drugs was gaining ground among the 
common folk of the Indians. It was fairly to be called old woman's 
practice, as it was largely in their hands. It grew out of observa- 
tion ; infusions of certain herbs produced certain results, acted as 
emetics or purgatives, and hence these herbs came to be employed 
with something like an intelligent purpose. Many of the herbs used 
were absolutely inert, many were harmful, of course, since where 
there is practically no true diagnosis and no correct knowledge of 
the effect of drugs there can be no really intelligent selection of 
remedies ; but in the case of certain simple diseases herbs, the actual 
cautery, and above all the sweating process, were beginning to be 
recognized by the common folk as serviceable, and to be employed 
to some extent without recourse to the Shaman. 



198 



THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST. 



[Vol. II, 



As the child must creep ere it can walk, in such theories and 
treatment, childish though they may seem, may be discerned the 
beginnings of the noble science of medicine which, having largely 
cast aside the superstitions that hampered its infant steps, now 
walks erect, and although of late she seems to have revived the 
beliefs of her childhood, her handmaiden, science, bids her call 
the demon disease spirits ignorance and vicious habits, the diseases 
themselves bacilli or germs. The Indian believed that the white 
man carried the spirit of small-pox in bottles and let it loose 
among them. Modern science actually does bottle the small-pox 
germs and germinate them at will. So the Indian theory of dis- 
ease reappears in a new form. 

Such in briefest outline are some of the achievements of the In- 
dian as he was found by civilized man. Whatever value may be 
placed upon them, whatever rank may be assigned them in the scale 
of human efforts, they were at least his own, and some of them 
compare favorably with the record of our Aryan ancestors before 
they split up into the numerous nations which have done so much to 
civilize the world. Many, I am aware, hold that the Indian had 
progressed as far towards civilization as his capacities admitted ; 
others have held, and possibly some now hold, that he was already 
on the decline ; they see in his crude ideas and rude inventions only 
the degradation of a higher estate ; in other words, instead of a 
savage preparing to enter civilization through the necessary half-way 
state of barbarism, he is held a half-civilized man lapsing into sav- 
agery. Such views, it is needless to say, find no favor in the mind 
of the evolutionist. To him, the achievements of the Indian are 
only the milestones which have marked the progress of every civil- 
ized nation in its march from what it was to what it is ; to him the 
chief value and significance of his studies of the mental state of the 
Indian, as expressed in his mythology, his medicine, his social and 
political organization, or in his more concrete arts, is the fact that 
in them he reads the records of his own past. If there be any truth 
whatever in the theory of evolution as applied to human progress, 
only one inference can be drawn from the history of the Indian race 
as it appears in historical pages and in the no less eloquent records 
interpreted by archaeologists. This inference is that, starting in its 
career later than some other races, or being less favored by circum- 
stances or conditions of environment, or possibly being less en- 
dowed, the Indian, despite all, had progressed an immense distance 



July 1889.] WHO ARK THE AMERICAN INDIANS? 



199 



towards civilization ; that the race contained all the capabilities for 
a further advance and for achieving a civilization of its own, differ- 
ing, it may be, markedly from our own, as other civilizations differ, 
but still containing within itself all the essentials of that wonderfully 
complex thing called civilization. Such at least is the lesson evo- 
lution teaches. 

Hardly had the new land been discovered when the question 
arose, who are the Indians and where did they come from ? Natur- 
ally enough the Indian had his own answers to these questions. 
As to who they are all tribes agree. "We are men," said the 
Illinois to the French, and the name of every tribe in America — the 
name by which they know themselves — signifies "true men," "men 
of men," "the only men," as evincing their superiority to all others. 
As to their origin, their ideas are as confused and perplexing as they 
are multifarious and conflicting. It may almost be said, as many 
tribes so many origins. A large number of tribes claim to have 
originated in the localities where they were first found by Europeans, 
where they emerged from the ground or came from the recesses of 
some neighboring mountain. The Chocta, for instance, claim to 
have come from an artificial mound in Mississippi. The mound has 
a depression at its center which is accounted for by the Creator 
stamping upon it to close the aperture when he saw that a sufficient 
number had emerged to form the Chocta tribe. One of the Shawni 
tribes was created from the ashes of the fire. The Yuchi, of Georgia, 
claim to be children of the sun, who is their mother, and the earth, 
their father, an exact reversal of the usual parentage. The Porno, 
of California, claim that their ancestors, the Coyote men, were 
created directly from a knoll of red earth. The Klamath, of Ore- 
gon, were made from the service berry. The Yokut, of California, 
emerged from badger holes, as their name implies. Somewhat more 
poetical is the idea of the Aht, of Vancouver Island, who allege that 
animals were first created at Cape Flattery, and from the union of 
these with a star that fell from the skies resulted the first men, their 
ancestors. 

The above are fair examples of the ideas entertained by the In- 
dians respecting their own origin. Puerile they certainly are, yet 
who will maintain that they are more so than the theories of origin 
held by the Greeks and other classical peoples ? 

Who, then, are the American aborigines? For Columbus and 
his followers there was but one answer to the question. As he had 



200 



THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST. 



[Vol. II. 



reached the eastern shores of India the people must be Indians, and 
his error is perpetuated to-day in the name. Later, when the newly 
discovered country was found to be not an old, but a new continent, 
the question of the origin and consanguinity of the Indians was re- 
newed. So strongly tinged with religious thought was the philoso- 
phy of the day that biblical sources were naturally first appealed to 
to solve the knotty problem. As mankind was supposed to have 
originated in Asia and as all but the ten lost tribes were accounted 
for they were rationally appealed to for the origin of the Indian. 
Perhaps the best exponent of the belief in the Jewish origin of the 
Indians was Adair, who published his celebrated essay in 1775. 
Thoroughly familiar with Indian beliefs and customs, he succeeded 
in bringing together a mass of evidence, derived from a comparison 
of religious rites, civil and martial customs, marriages, funeral cere- 
monies, languages, and traditions, as curious and contradictory as it 
is inconclusive. 

The Jewish origin of the Indians secured a very strong hold on 
the minds of the writers and thinkers of the eighteenth century, and 
so firmly did the theory take root that it has never been wholly given 
up, but is held to-day by a greater or less number as the only rational 
belief. 

Though the favorite, the Jewish hypothesis is by no means the only 
one. Scientists and laymen count their theories by the scores. The 
Bible and ancient philosophy alike have been appealed to in support 
of pet hypotheses. 

One believes America to have been colonized by Phoenician mer- 
chants ; another, by Carthagenians. America was peopled by Car- 
thagenians, says Venegas, and Anahuac is but another name for Anak. 
Besides, both nations practiced picture-writing ; both venerated fire 
and water, wore skins of animals, pierced the ears, ate dogs, drank 
to excess, telegraphed by means of fires on hills, wore all their finery 
on going to war, poisoned their arrows, beat drums and shouted in 
battle. Not an unfair example this of the scientific deductions of 
the day. Surely he must be unreasonable who refuses to be con- 
vinced by such testimony ! 

Says the pious Cotton Mather, the natives of the country now 
possessed by the New Englanders had been forlorn and wretched 
heathen ever since they first herded here, and though we know not 
when or how these Indians first became inhabitants of this mighty 
continent, yet we may guess that probably the devil decoyed those 



July [889.] WHO ARE THE AMERICAN INDIANS? 



201 



miserable savages hither, in hopes that the gospel would never come 
here to disturb his absolute empire over them. 

The evidence that the Indians came from Scandinavia areas con- 
vincingly put as those proving that they came from Ireland, or Ice- 
land, or Greenland. Equally conclusive are the arguments for a 
passage by the Indian across Bering Strait from Asia, across the 
Northern Pacific from Japan or China in junks, or across the South- 
ern Pacific in canoes from the Polynesian Islands, or Australia. 
Even Africa is not too far distant to send its contingent to the new 
land, and when the ocean has been deemed to be too broad to per- 
mit a passage from foreign shores the willing imagination of the 
writer has dropped an island into mid-ocean, and called it Atlantis, 
to facilitate alike the crossing of the Indian and the reception of a 
fanciful theory. Thus there is a theory of origin to suit the tastes 
of all. If you have a special bias or predilection, you have only to 
choose for yourself. If there be any among you who decline to find 
the ancestors of our Indians among the Jews, Phoenicians, Scandi- 
navians, Irish, Welsh, Carthagenians, Egyptians, or Tartars, then you 
still have a choice among the Hindu, Malay, Polynesians, Chinese, 
or Japanese, or, indeed, amongst almost any other of the children of 
men. 

Preposterous as may seem many of the theories above alluded to, 
nearly all of them rest upon a certain basis of fact and comparison. 
Many, at least, of the similarities of thought, custom, methods, arts, 
religions, and myths from which the theories are deduced indeed 
exist, though false analogies permeate them all. The thread of fact 
which sustains the theories is, moreover, far too slender to bear the 
weight put upon it. It is not that the theories contain so much that 
is erroneous but the proof offered is entirely insufficient. The 
science of yesterday reared its edifices upon foundations of fact the 
very slightest. The science of to-day demands broader foundations 
and more deeply laid upon which to base its conclusions. Erro- 
neous hypotheses like the above have, however, been productive of 
great good in pointing out and emphasizing some of the most useful 
lessons which the student of anthropology of the present day must 
learn and ever keep in mind. Of these perhaps the most important 
is that the human mind is everywhere practically the same ; that in 
a similar state of culture man in groping his way along will ever 
seek the same or similar means to a desired end. That, granting 
the same conditions of environment, man acts upon them and is 
26 



202 



THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST. 



[Vol. II. 



acted upon by them in the same way the world over. Hence, in 
large part, arise those similarities of customs, beliefs, religions, and 
arts which have been appealed to as evidences of genetic connection 
or of common origin, when, in fact, they are evidences of nothing 
but of a common humanity. 

This leads us to speak briefly of some of the leading methods of 
classification by which scientists have sought to solve the problem of 
the origin and relation of races and among other peoples of our own 
Indians. 

The physical tests of race most approved by ethnologists are color, 
viz., the color of the skin, hair, and eyes; the structural differences 
of the hair ; the size and shape of the skull as determined by ca- 
pacity and measurements, and the test of language. Reserving the 
latter for more extended notice later, a few words may be devoted 
to the first named. 

Few of the tests formerly relied upon in classifying mankind have 
proved less satisfactory to modern investigators than that of color. 
The microscope appears to show that color is not due to organic 
differences of race ; not only are there great differences in the 
color of individuals of the same tribe, but of the same family, 
and even in the same individual at different periods of life. Thus, 
in the case of our Indians, it is well known that the skin of the 
infant at an early age is very light colored, scarcely distinguishable, 
in fact, from a Caucasian child, and that it assumes a deeper shade 
only with advancing years. This, I believe, is true irrespective of 
tribe or habitat. The hair of the Indian child is brown instead 
of black. The color of the adult Indian varies within very wide 
limits, but singularly enough he is never copper colored or red, as 
he has been called from the time of the discovery. All our Indians 
are brown, and while certain tribes, as the Tuscaroras and Mandans, 
are so light as to give rise to the theory that they are descendants of 
the Welsh, other tribes, as some of the Californians, are so dark as 
to closely approach the black Africans. I say black Africans, for it 
is to be remarked, in passing, that some African tribes are very 
light colored. 

The division of mankind into four groups — white, black, copper, 
and olive — is, in a general way, consistent with facts. Moreover, 
these divisions are, to a certain extent, correlated with geographical 
range and climate, and thus correspond to the color differences of 
birds and animals. That they are also and perhaps more strictly 



July 1889.] WHO ARE THE AMERICAN INDIANS? 



203 



correlated with culture status is not to be doubted ; for it maybe 
said, in a general way, that all civilized peoples are light colored 
and nearly all barbaric and savage peoples are dark colored. So 
complete, however, is the intergradation of color when all varieties 
of mankind are considered, and so intangible are the distinctions 
which must be relied upon to distinguish them in the case of indi- 
viduals and even of tribes that it appears that while color affords 
a convenient off-hand means of classification, and while it may be 
made useful in connection with other criteria, it is quite insufficient 
in itself as a test of race. 

The more obvious peculiarities of the hair, according as it is 
straight, crisped, or curly, early attracted the attention of ethnolo- 
gists. The modern microscope has shown that these peculiarities are 
more or less intimately correlated with structural differences, and 
that the straight hair of the American Indian and the Mongolian is 
nearly cylindrical in section, while the frizzled hair of the Negro 
and Papuan shows an oval or flattened section. Between the two 
extremes, however, are too many shades of difference to permit the 
extensive use of this criterion as a race classifier, except in a subor- 
dinate way. 

Much time and thought has been expended by craniologists in 
the effort to classify races by means of the skull. Notwithstanding 
the great ingenuity exercised in devising methods and instruments 
to secure constant results and reliable figures as a basis for compari- 
son, the results thus far obtained have been disappointing. So faulty 
were the mechanical means adopted by the earlier craniologists that 
students of to-day are compelled to discard their data and resulting 
conclusions and begin almost de novo. There are many able men 
who are sanguine not only that the physical structure of man may 
yet be made to reveal secrets bearing upon the origin of races, if 
there be more than one, but that the science of craniology in par- 
ticular is destined to have an important bearing upon these racial 
problems. Whatever the future of craniology or the other methods 
of classification by physical characteristics may have in store, the 
contradictory results thus far obtained offer little to satisfy us. Not 
only do the naturalists and ethnologists who have studied man's 
physical characteristics differ as to the number of races of mankind 
and as to what constitutes a proper basis for classifying them, but thus 
far there has been little agreement as to the assignment of particular 
tribes or peoples. Perhaps more authorities are agreed that there is 



204 



TH E AM ERICA N A NTH KOPOLOG 1ST . 



[Vol. II. 



but one race and one origin of mankind than agree upon any greater 
specific number ; but when it is remembered that there are author- 
ities who place the number of distinct races at two, three, four, five, 
six, seven, eight, eleven, sixteen, and that one places the total as 
high as sixty-three, it will be agreed, I think, that it is better to sus- 
pend judgment and not to accept any present result as final. 

We have already noted that the earlier theories of origin for the In- 
dian, based as they largely were upon certain assumed analogies of cus- 
toms, laws, religious observances, myths, etc., rested upon such slight 
foundations as to hardly entitle them to be classed as scientific hy- 
potheses. We have also seen that up to the present time the attempts 
to classify mankind by his physical characters have produced dis- 
cordant results, and that little dependence is to be placed upon the 
results themselves or upon the theories arising therefrom which relate 
to the more profound question of the origin of races. In turning to 
the test of language, if doubt and uncertainty were left behind and 
harmony and agreement took the place of discordant views we might 
count ourselves fortunate indeed. But such is not the case. We have 
indeed only to go back a short time to find that the generalizations 
drawn from the study of language are as crude, the hypotheses as 
baseless, the theories as wild as are those we have just glanced at. 
Nor is this strange. Like its sister sciences, linguistics had to pass 
through a period in which speculation and hypothesis, instead of 
going hand-in-hand with facts and induction, usurped their place. 
Until the inductive method was born no science of philology was 
possible. The science of comparative philology is indeed of recent 
origin, nothing worthy of the name existing before the present cen- 
tury. Within the last fifty years it has made a wonderful growth and 
achieved results little short of marvelous. Though still in its infancy 
as regards future possibilities, and while it needs and welcomes the 
aid of all the other sciences to solve the complex questions which 
come properly within its domain, it is unquestion ably our best 
guide in problems relating to the origin and relationship of the 
races of mankind. 

There are two broad and contradictory theories of the nature and 
origin of language. The first, which may be called the divine theory, 
is based upon biblical authority, and sees in language a divine gift 
from the Creator to the first pair. From the language thus miracu- 
lously created and put into the mouth of man have sprung all the 
varieties of speech with which men have clothed their thoughts from 



July [889.] WHO ARE THE AMERICAN INDIANS? 



205 



the creation until now. The second or evolution theory sees evi- 
dences of growth and development in every language spoken by man. 
Comparing the languages of highly civilized peoples with those of 
lower culture, it finds in the latter evidences of the successive stages 
through which all languages have necessarily passed in their upward 
growth. 

It maintains that language is an acquired possession ; that it has 
originated through powers inherent in man himself ; that by means 
of it he measures the distance between himself and the brutes ; in 
short, by it more than by the possession of any other one thing he 
is man. 

It notes the fact that among lower peoples languages are less and 
less highly organized ; and that among them signs are much more 
freely used than among the higher ; that the sign language is capable 
of a development among savage peoples and mutes so wonderful as 
to be the medium of all classes of ideas ; and noting these it is pre- 
pared to believe, though it has not yet proved, that there was a time 
in the dawn of the human race when organized vocal speech was 
unknown, and when the fingers, the facial expression and the pos- 
tures of the body, were the chief if not the sole means possessed by 
man to communicate to his fellows his simple wants and ideas. At 
first it may seem a startling, nay an almost incredible, idea that 
the time was when men could not talk, I do not say communicate, 
for it is hardly necessary to remind you that even the lower animals 
have means of communication. So much is spoken language a part 
of ourselves, so dependent are we on it, that it appears to be as much 
a natural possession as eyesight or the power to breathe. It is diffi- 
cult indeed to conceive of ourselves as human beings without it. 
Yet each one of us came into the world without the ability to talk, 
though doubtless we soon made it known to others that we possessed 
voices, and some of us expended much time and effort ere we ac- 
quired the rudiments of speech, to say nothing of the years spent in 
acquiring facility in its use. The history of the child in this respect 
is but an epitome of the history of the human race. Ages of the 
child-life of the race were consumed when the organs of speech ex- 
isted in a rudimentary condition ; ages more passed ere it learned to 
train the slowly developing and stubborn vocal organs to do its 
bidding and to utter articulate sounds ; and ages more were re- 
quired ere it had organized the first harsh and uncouth vocables 
into the harmonious and expressive thing we call language. 



206 



THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST. 



[Vol. II. 



Before proceeding further let us glance briefly at some of the 
methods employed by linguistic students in their efforts to unlock 
the mysteries of linguistic relationship. It has been well said that 
he who knows but one language knows no language. The truth of 
this paradox is chiefly rooted in the fact that every existing language 
has varied and developed from earlier and ruder forms ; that further- 
more no language has had an independent existence, but each one is 
connected in its origin and by affiliation with sister tongues that 
earlier or later in the history of the races speaking them have sepa- 
rated from the mother language and thenceforth have pursued each 
its own career ; he then who would be master of his own tongue must 
study not only its vocabulary and grammar, but for enlightenment 
on many obscure points must study its related dialects. How the 
comparative study of language is to be carried on linguistic students 
are well agreed. Since language is made up of words, each word 
being the sign of a thought, the science of linguistics is largely the 
study of words — in other words, it is the tracing word genealogies 
by means of their etymology. By stripping words of the accretions 
they have received in the process of time they may be resolved into 
roots, and by the comparison of these roots the philologist obtains 
proof of relationship and classifies languages into linguistic families. 

It may be well at this point to define clearly what linguists mean 
by a linguistic family. A linguistic family is a group of languages 
which have sprung from a common parent language. The first 
requisite of a linguistic family, therefore, is that the languages com- 
posing it shall be related genetically; the second, that they shall 
not be related to the languages of any other family. Each family 
thus consists of a group of languages wholly disconnected from all 
other families. 

Voltaire said that to the etymologist vowels are of little conse- 
quence and the consonants of none at all, and for much that passes 
for etymologizing there is as much truth as wit in the saying. But 
there are etymologists and etymologists ; moreover, in most related 
languages there is a large body of words, whose resemblances are so 
obvious and the manner and extent of the changes they have under- 
gone so clear that he who runs may read. The chief danger to the 
student in dealing with such material is to mistake apparent for real 
resemblances, and to be led to present false word analogies as evi- 
dences of true genetic relationship. Much, then, of the work of the 
student is easy; but as his labors deal with linguistic changes more 



July 1889.] WHO ARK THE AMERICAN INDIANS? 



207 



and more remote in point of time the greater is the difficulty, and he 
who undertakes the task of comparing with each other all of the lan- 
guages into which the larger linguistic families are split and to trace 
hack the origin of their vocabularies to a common parent must 
indeed arm himself with all the resources of ripe scholarship, critical 
ability, and caution if he would successfully avoid the pitfalls which 
beset his steps at every turn. 

That linguistic science is competent to deal with problems of great 
magnitude and intricacy, and that there are students who are capable 
of applying its varied resources, best appears in the grand achieve- 
ments which concern the group of languages known as the Aryan or 
Indo-European family, in which our own English tongue takes a 
prominent if not the first place. It is almost wholly as the result of 
linguistic studies that the component members of the large and im- 
portant Aryan family are now recognized and the history of its earlier 
members reconstructed to a remarkable degree. The family contains 
eight groups of distinct languages. Among many others the family 
includes as offspring from one source Sanskrit, Hindu, Romany or 
Gipsy, Persian, Armenian, Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Scotch, Latin, 
Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Albanian, Greek, Bulgarian, 
Russian, Servian, Polish, German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, 
Norwegian, and many others. Though one of the largest and, by 
reason of its history and the prominent part it has played in the 
civilization of the world, the most important, the Aryan family is 
only one of many linguistic families, each one of which is made up 
in the same way of a greater or less number of related languages. 
Such are the Bushman and Hottentot, of Africa ; the Semitic, of 
Asia and Africa ; the Chinese, Australian, and many others: The 
related languages which make up linguistic families vary indefinitely 
in the amount of likeness they bear to each other. They are often 
so much unlike that those who speak them cannot understand each 
other, as, for instance, English, German, and French. Though these 
languages are mutually unintelligible, yet they contain many words 
of nearly identical form, while other members of the Aryan family 
have in process of time become so unlike affiliated tongues that it 
requires the most critical study to detect their relationship. As 
languages are the principal divisions of a linguistic family, so dialects 
are the subordinate divisions of a language. Family, languages, and 
dialects are to linguistic science what family, genera, and species are 
to biology. 



20S 



THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST. 



[Vol. IT. 



There is an important question which may be considered at this 
point. To what extent is linguistic relationship to be interpreted as 
blood relationship ; in other words, how far does linguistic classifica- 
tion answer for race classification. In cosmopolitan America, where 
nearly all speak English and yet a very large proportion are of foreign 
parentage, it is obvious that a pure linguistic classification of indi- 
viduals would largely misinterpret the facts of parentage and race. 
Nevertheless, taken in connection with readily ascertained facts, it 
will not mislead even in such an extreme case, and usually a lan- 
guage classification of a tribe or people actually does express race re- 
lationship. 

To return to the Aryan family: Not only are we able by means of 
language to class together as related members of one great family the 
above-mentioned languages, which apparently are so diverse in the 
sound and form of their words, but by means of word analysis we 
can reconstruct the past history of the peoples who spoke them and 
can get a glimpse even of the mode of life, customs, arts, and relig- 
ious beliefs of our remote Aryan ancestry. The process by which this 
is done is sufficiently simple, although, like many other simple pro- 
cesses, its application is not so easy. When we find in the greater 
number of the languages of a linguistic family the same fully formed 
word with the same meaning we are justified in believing that it ex- 
isted before the separation of the family, and that the thing it signifies 
was already known to the parent body. Applying the rule to the 
case of the Aryan family we learn that contrary to earlier theories 
our forefathers came from a cold region, since eastern and western 
Aryan tongues contain names for the birch and pine, and these are the 
only two tree names common to both branches. The same process 
continued shows us that the family relations were defined much as 
they are with us to-day and that marriages were monogamous. The 
old Aryans held the land in common and redistributed it from time 
to time among the members of the clan. The houses were built of 
wood and were entered by means of a door. The communities were 
settled in villages with a recognized chief or head, and the villages 
were connected by roads over which traveled peddlers carrying their 
wares for sale. All were free men. They worshiped natural objects 
and natural phenomena, more particularly the sun. They believed 
in the evil spirits of night and darkness. They were a pastoral peo- 
ple, and cattle and sheep formed their chief wealth. They also had 
goats, pigs, dogs, geese, and bees. They had domesticated the 



July 1SS9.] WHO ARE THE AMERICAN INDIANS : 



209 



horse though they did not ride, but employed him like the ox for 
drawing carts. They still used stone implements, though gold and 
silver and bronze were known. Charms were chiefly relied upon to 
cure disease. Future events were divined from the flight of birds. 
These are a few of the facts among many which linguistic science 
has revealed to us pertaining to the life and achievements of our 
Aryan ancestry before the historic period. Surely no contemptible 
record this for a new science. 

You will not fail to notice that there are a number of points in 
common between the condition of our Aryan ancestors and the In- 
dian, though the former as a whole were much further advanced. 

We have glanced in the briefest possible manner at the methods 
pursued by linguistic students and have noted a few of the results 
achieved by them in the study and classification of the highest de- 
veloped languages. The study of such languages affords criteria of 
great value, but, were the linguistic student to confine his attention 
to these alone, his view of the nature and processes of linguistic de- 
velopment would necessarily be imperfect and one-sided. Just as in 
biology the study of the lower organisms throws a flood of light upon 
the structure of higher forms, so in linguistics must the lesser devel- 
oped languages be appealed to for the settlement of many lin- 
guistic problems displayed in highly developed ones. Let us now 
turn our attention to the Indian languages of this country and see 
what progress has been made in the attempt to classify them. 

It may be premised that no part of the known world affords a 
better opportunity for the study of the nature of language and its 
processes of growth than America. The Indian languages are by no 
means the most primitive at present spoken by man, and it may sur- 
prise some of my hearers to be told that in respect of some of their 
characteristics they compare favorably with Greek and other classic 
tongues, though the classic languages as a whole belong to a much 
higher stage of development. Instead of being mere jargons of 
words, disconnected with each other and capable of expressing only 
the simplest ideas, as I find many intelligent people believe, they are 
in some directions singularly highly developed, and not only are they 
capable of serving as the vehicle of every thought possible to their 
possessors, but their vocabularies are extensive, possess many syn- 
onyms, and furnish the means of discriminating the nicest shades 
of meaning. 



27 



210 



THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST. 



[Vol. II. 



There is not a principle or process in the most highly developed 
languages of which the germs at least are not discernible in Indian 
languages. The differences are not those of kind but of degree 
of culture. 

Moreover inherent in them is the power of unlimited growth and 
expansion, and just as our own language grows, keeping step with 
advances in science and art, so Indian languages are capable of a 
development equal to the most exacting demands of civilization. 

While thus in many respects highly developed, Indian languages 
are not to be compared as vehicles of thought with such languages 
as our own English, for instance. As a body they are still in that 
stage of development in which the various processes of language- 
making may be studied with comparative ease. Just as the various 
natural processes by which mountains are leveled and the earth's sur- 
face carved out and remodelled are more apparent and more readily 
studied by the geologist in the still primitive West, so Indian lan- 
guages offer to the scrutiny of the linguistic student a similar unfin- 
ished condition highly favorable for analysis and study. 

For the past fifteen years Major Powell and his assistants of the 
Bureau of Ethnology, with the aid of many collaborators in various 
parts of the country, have been accumulating vocabularies by means 
of which to classify Indian languages. The present provisional results 
of the study of the large amount of material accumulated appear 
before you on the Linguistic Map, which is colored to show the 
areas occupied by the several linguistic families. Of these there 
appear no fewer than 58. 

What interpretation are we to place upon the astonishing fact 
that in the territory north of Mexico there were at the time of the 
discovery 58 distinct Indian linguistic families, containing some 300 
or more languages and dialects ? 

So far as language is a competent witness she has exhausted all 
the evidence thus far accumulated when she has grouped the Indians 
in 58 families. Back of this point she may not now go except as a 
theorist and in pure speculation. So far as she is entitled to speak 
authoritatively, these 58 families are separate entities, which never 
had any connection with each other. But she recognizes her 
own limitations too well to dare to state positively that this is the 
interpretation that must be placed upon the results she has attained. 
When facts from which to draw deductions fail, men may and do 
resort to theories. Let us glance at the two broad hypotheses which 



July 1889.] WHO ARE THE AMERICAN INDIANS? 



211 



have been based upon the development theory of language. The 
first is in effect that all the present languages of the earth are 
not so unlike that they may not have been developed from a single 
original parent language. By this view the original language is 
supposed to have changed and developed into all the various forms 
of speech that are now spoken or that have ever been spoken. Ac- 
cording to this view the families of languages as at present classified 
have no other significance than as groups of related tongues, the 
once existing connection of which with other tongues cannot now 
be proved, because through the process of change the connecting 
links have been lost. 

The second hypothesis assumes that there must have been at least 
as many original languages as there are now existing families; it 
assumes, in other words, that the families of speech are fundament- 
ally distinct and therefore cannot have had a common origin. 
The first theory postulates that from original unity of language has 
come infinite diversity; the second that the tendency has ever 
been from original diversity towards unity. 

Widely different as are these two theories of the origin of lin- 
guistic families, they agree in one essential particular. They both 
remove the origin so far back in time as to make it practically im- 
possible to prove the truth or falsity of either theory. 

Both of these hypotheses have able advocates ; but for a variety 
of reasons, which time will not permit me to give, the second is 
deemed the more plausible. At all events, it best explains many 
difficulties. 

There is abundance of archaeologic evidence showing that man 
has resided on this continent for a very long period, and the char- 
acter of the remains prove that the farther back in time we go the 
ruder being he was. Linguistic testimony is to the same effect, and 
there is no a priori reason why man may not have lived upon this 
continent ages before he learned to talk, no reason for that matter, 
why America may not have peopled the earth, if the earth was 
peopled from a single center, or why, if there have been several 
centers of origin for mankind, the Indians, as they themselves believe, 
may not have originated here where they were found. 

It is the fashion, I hardly know why, unless it be the religious 
bias, for those who hold that language has had but one origin to 
assume that America is the younger continent, so far as her people 
are concerned, and to infer that it was peopled from Asia. If 



212 



THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST. 



[Vol. II. 



America was peopled from Asia in modern times there should be 
some evidence of the fact in American languages. But there is no 
evidence of the sort. None of the American families of language 
are in any way related to the Asiatic tongues. Bering Strait fur- 
nishes indeed a perfectly practicable canoe route from Asia to 
America, but it appears to have been generally overlooked that the 
Strait furnishes an equally accessible route from America to Asia. 
The latter is demonstrated by the fact that the Eskimo of Alaska 
have in recent times sent an Eskimo-speaking colony across Bering 
Strait to Siberia. In other words, so far as direct testimony goes, 
Asia is indebted to America for a small segment of its people, but 
America owes no similar debt to Asia. With reference to the origin 
of our Indian tribes, then, linguistic science is in position to state 
this much, that if our Indians came to America, either from Asia or 
from any other foreign shore, it was at a period so remote as to 
permit such profound changes in the structure of the language 
brought here by the immigrants that no traces of genetic connection 
are now discernible. 

If we reject the one origin theory of language and assume that 
each linguistic family originated independently, there is obviously 
not the slightest use of turning to Asia or Europe for anything like 
a recent importation of the Indian; for have we not fifty-eight dis- 
tinct origins to account for? Obviously the fifty-eight families are 
as likely to have originated here as anywhere else ; for remember 
that every country has linguistic families of its own to account for. 
Is there, then, any possible theory which will meet the case? There 
is certainly one that is possible, if not probable. It is the theory 
that, whether born from the soil or an immigrant from other lands, - 
our Indians spread over the entire continent before they acquired 
organized language, and that from not one but from fifty-eight 
centers sprung up the germs of speech which have resulted in the 
different families of language. This theory accords with the idea 
that there may have been but one origin of man, and that in any 
event all the Indians from the Arctic to Patagonia are of one race. 
It does not forbid the supposition that the Indian was an immigrant 
from other shores, though it permits the thought that the American 
Indian may have originated on American soil. 

Though this theory seems more probable than the other, which 
assumes that the languages of our Indians were brought here from 
foreign shores, it must be frankly admitted .that linguistic science is 



July 1889.] WHO ARK THE AMERICAN INDIANS? 



213 



not now and possibly never will be competent to decide between 
them. If she is unable to decide fully as to the origin of the In- 
dian's language, how can she be expected to solve the infinitely 
more complex problem which concerns the ultimate origin of the 
peoples who spoke them? She certainly has no solution for this 
problem now. When she considers the number of linguistic families 
and the vast length of time it must have taken to develop their lan- 
guages and dialects she finds herself confronted by a problem be- 
yond her present powers. And yet the case is not hopeless. Lin- 
guistic science is still in its infancy, and its future may contain 
possibilities far exceeding the dream of the most sanguine. As 
science has revolutionized the world's processes and has made the 
impossibilities of a hundred years ago the common-places of to-day, 
so like wonders may be achieved in the domain of thought, and the 
science of language, with the assistance of her sister sciences, may 
yet answer the unanswerable questions of the present. 

When interrogated as to the origin of the Indian, all that she can 
now say is that whether the Indian originated on this continent, 
where he was found, or elsewhere, it was in bygone ages — ages so 
far removed from our own time that the interval is to be reckoned, 
not by the years of chronology, but by the epochs of geologic time ; 
with such problems she affirms that at present she cannot deal. 

I have presented the subject to you to-day, not to answer it, but 
to aid you in comprehending the tremendous difficulties that en- 
shroud the problem. Much time and ingenuity has been expended 
in the past in attempting to force an answer to a question which 
cannot even yet be answered. The question, however, that really 
concerns the ethnologist of to-day is not who are the American 
Indians, but what are they and what have they accomplished in 
working out the problems of life, which, ever since his birth, man 
has grappled with. 

In reading the history of mankind we are too apt to be blinded 
by the achievements of our own Aryan race. As the old Greeks 
classed as barbarians all who did not speak their own tongue, so 
we are prone to think that most of the good that has come to hu- 
manity has come through and by means of our race. In truth, 
there are valuable lessons to be learned from races less high in civil- 
ization than our own. Though many and diverse are the roads 
that lead man to the higher life, they all pursue about the same 



214 



THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST. 



[Vol. II. 



course, and time only is required to unite them into one broad 
stream of progress. 

Many are the lessons taught by anthropology, but the grandest 
of them all is the lesson of the unity of mankind, the unity of a 
common nature and a common destiny, if not of a common 
origin. 



W 1 0 1 



iil^ lii^ ^flip j 



Ifc %/ \/ V<1 




^^^^ ^ '^^^ W^m^^^ i 



^> V--^*X "V^> y 1 







j5°^ »^M§> -life* 



n V 0 - 0 




i« * * °* O «0 

* 6 * .....V^ V — V o^..-..% 










